Re: [BoI] Re: [TCS] What is empathy (was: Why are you crying?)

On Dec 13, 2012 1:59 AM, "Elliot Temple" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> On Aug 23, 2012, at 8:58 AM, Rami Rustom <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 2:04 PM, Rami Rustom <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> On Aug 20, 2012 3:07 AM, "a b" <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 8:37 PM, Rami Rustom <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> In these situations, the child might be very quiet about what the
> >>>> problem is. So an approach that works is to guess why he might be sad
> >>>> and form it into a question: "Are you sad about your mom not being
> >>>> here?" If the guess was wrong, he'll tell you "no". If it was right,
> >>>> he'll tell you "yes". And he may open up a lot more and tell you more
> >>>> details. If he does, then use those details to form more accurate
> >>>> guesses. Even if he doesn't say any more details, you can guess again:
> >>>> "Are you sad because you won't be able to play with her anymore?" And
> >>>> continue the cycle. And some point he'll give you a detail that is a
> >>>> mistaken idea and you could help him by showing him that its a
> >>>> mistaken idea. He might say, "I don't want to lose you." So at this
> >>>> point you realize that the child is worried that he'll lose his only
> >>>> remaining parent because he has already lost one parent. So here the
> >>>> parent can say, "Oh.. well I'm very healthy, I'm probably not going to
> >>>> die until I'm very old, like older than grandpa.. and by then you'll
> >>>> be old like me. Did you know that most people die when they are very
> >>>> old like older than grandpa?"
> >>>
> >>> I'd agree this last part would be the right kind of response, but what
> >>> are you really doing...correcting a mistaken idea, or recognizing an
> >>> emotional need (with your emotions) and providing reassurance? If the
> >>> second, then does it make what is happening between you and the child
> >>> more or less clear by using this other vocabularly?
> >
> > So about this empathy idea, I looked it up and there are many many
> > definitions of it. Here's my definition:
> >
> > Empathy: The ability to understand that someone else is (mentally) hurting.
>
> Empathy is actually a concept in the service of conformity. It has to do with respecting all emotions considered legitimate by social authority, but not others.
>
> If you go find 20 examples of people actually using the concept, you may see what I mean. If not, post your counter examples.

You're right.


>
> > I noticed that TCS is big on empathy, even though the word empathy is
> > not used at all anywhere in TCS literature. TCS says that people
> > should not hurt each other. By hurt I mean mental/psychological hurt.
> > Mental hurt is an emotion.
> >
> > TCS explains that hurt is caused by doing something to someone that
> > they don't want done to them. Also someone can hurt themselves by
> > acting on a want while having a conflicting want, so part of him wants
> > to do X and part of him wants to do Y but X and Y are conflicting, so
> > acting on X means doing something when part of you didn't want to do
> > it.
> >
> > So if a parent makes his daughter do something she didn't want to do,
> > then he is hurting her. She has a negative emotion because she does
> > something she didn't want to do.
>
> To my knowledge, TCS does not assert that is a matter of emotions. I think that is your idea, not TCS.
>
> I don't see the need for you to attribute your statements to TCS. I think it'd work better if you just tried to say what you think is true and don't attribute it to TCS (or other sources) without using quotes from those sources.

Yes, I've made this mistake many times (attributing my ideas to others).


> > This emotion is called coercion.
>
> TCS does not say coercion is an emotion. I think it isn't.

Right. Coercion is an epistemic state, not an emotion.


> > The child felt coerced. And the parent caused it.
> >
> > In these situations, sometimes the parent feels a negative emotion
> > *because* the child felt a negative emotion. The parent doesn't want
> > the child to hurt, but the child is hurting. So part of the him
> > doesn't want to hurt his daughter, but part of him wants his daughter
> > do this thing. So the parent is coerced too, i.e. he feels coercion.
> > In these situations, the parent is empathetic. So empathy alone didn't
> > solve the problem.
> >
> > Sometimes (or some parents?) doesn't feel a negative emotion about
> > coercing his child. In which case the parent isn't coerced, i.e. he
> > doesn't feel coercion. This is not empathetic.
> >
> >
> > So whats the solution? TCS explains that we should not coerce our
> > children (nor ourselves or anyone else either). But how do we get
> > things done? One alternative to coercion is persuasion, which works
> > well for children that can speak. Although the technique for
> > younger-than-speaking-age children is the same for older children and
> > even for adults, which is to be creative in providing alternate ideas
> > for things to do until one is found to be something that everyone
> > wants, so no one is coerced.
> >
> > So here's an example. Your 4 year old is bored at home cause there
> > aren't any kids to play with
>
> That is a bad explanation. No one is bored for that reason alone. There are things to do in life other than play with kids.

Right.


> > so he decides that he wants to go to
> > school with the other kids. Before school starts, we have to have a
> > dental checkup.
>
> You don't have to. Part of being a good parent is questioning what one has to do to one's children.

Yes. People should have more of an infallibalist approach -- one of
doubting one's ideas more.


> > The night before the dental appointment, parent says
> > to child, "oh btw, tomorrow morning we have a dental appointment." Kid
> > says (with a frown), "no I don't want to go to the dentist." Parent
> > says, "oh if we don't do the dentist appointment then they won't let
> > you in school."
>
> I am skeptical of this claim.
>
> > Kid says (with a smile), "oh" and then goes about his
> > business ending the discussion. The next day he wakes up mentally
> > ready to go to the dentist.
>
> Why did kid accept doing something he didn't want to without any good arguments or explanations?
>
> It sounds like he trusts his parent even to the point of sacrifice. That's not good. Parent should be emphasizing more that he's wrong a lot. Parent shouldn't have let the topic go at this. If child wasn't interested parent could research it on his own.

Right. Parent should doubt his ideas more (instead of irrationally
trusting his ideas), and he should help child doubt more too (instead
of irrationally trusting parent's ideas).


>
> Why isn't parent saying something like this? "Because you don't want to go, i will try to find out if there's any other options. you can help if you want, or i can show you how i do it, but either way i'll try to get you out of it". Why is child satisfied even though parent didn't say anything like that?

Like you said, he's trusting the parent, i.e. the child is not
doubting the parent's ideas.


> >
> > Now many people believe that kids aren't rational enough to be
> > persuaded. This is false.
>
> I take it you intend the above as an example of rational persuasion of a child. But that's not a good argument because the parent just asserted something and the child never questioned it or learned about if/why it's true. And it's a poor argument because the above is just a hypothetical example (right?), so that doesn't prove it would happen in real life.

Right. They were explanationless assertions.


> > What is true is that sometimes parents are
> > not rational enough to create persuasive enough arguments. Sometimes
> > rational discussion is prevented when either of the two people are
> > using knowledge that they don't share.
>
> No.
>
> That claim implies rational discussion is always impossible, because no two people ever share exactly identical relevant knowledge. But rational discussion is possible, so the claim must be false.
>
> > So the parent should hone the
> > skill of refining his explanations using only the knowledge that they
> > both share. Another preventer of rational discussion is that parents
> > have bad habits of using facial expressions (e.g. frowns) that explain
> > to the child that the parent is angry or annoyed,
>
> A frown is not an explanation.
>
> It communicates, it does not explain.
>
> Do you not know what an explanation is, even vaguely? Or did you not think about what one is before writing about them? I don't understand but I suspect there's an important misconception revealed here.

I've seen the word criticism used in this way: "Idea Y is a criticism
of idea X." But idea Y was not an explanation -- it was only an
assertion. Or X and Y are rival theories of each other, but they
aren't explanations of each other. So I thought that meant that the
word criticism is used loosely in this way. And since a criticism is
an explanation of a flaw in an idea, I thought that the word
explanation could be used loosely too, e.g. your frown explains that
my mistake is shameful.


> > So what do you think of my definition of empathy?
> >
> > Which parts of my explanation do you disagree with?
>
> It's an ivory tower philosopher-intellectual type of definition, rather than something connected to reality. It's important to pay some attention to the world we live in if one wishes to comment well on it.

Yes, my idea was disconnected from reality. And this is what
"ivory-tower-philosophy" means.

-- Rami